


How Do I Look

by irislim



Category: Little Women (2019), Little Women Series - Louisa May Alcott
Genre: Comfort, F/M, Family, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-13
Updated: 2020-04-28
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:47:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23628670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/irislim/pseuds/irislim
Summary: An extended look at three of my favorite scenes from Greta Gerwig's masterfully-crafted "Little Women." Laurie x Amy forever.
Relationships: Theodore Laurence/Amy March
Comments: 32
Kudos: 231





	1. Chapter 1

"You look beautiful. You _are_ beautiful," says Laurie, before Amy leaves with Fred Vaughn.

Maybe it's the way he says it, or the way he looks at her when he says it. Maybe it's the way he corrects his own tone to sound like he is stating an irrefutable fact.

It could be a thousand other things. Amy isn't exactly in the right frame of mind to soul-search and name precisely what it is.

But those words cut her, the way she hopes her words at the New Year's party cut him. Theodore Lawrence, the eternally charming, gets told off by a lowly former neighbor that she despises him. Amy March, the eternally insecure, gets informed by the man of her childhood fantasies that he thinks she is inherently worthy of some kind of adoration.

It's shocking, and world-altering.

She blinks.

Outside, Fred hollers. Her future beckons.

She spares another glance at Laurie, whose face is basically begging her not to go.

But how can she not - after having told him in such confident terms that she was ready to sell her heart for money? How can she defy the poets with her words, and not her actions?

Amy March is a lot of things, but she is not a hypocrite.

"Thank you," she takes in the compliment with a square of her shoulders.

"Fred Vaughn is a lucky man," Laurie adds before she's out the door. She pauses with her fingers on the handle.

She closes her eyes, tears threatening, and turns.

"Because he's rich?" She spits.

"That's only part of it." Laurie talks with his hands in his pockets - ever cocky, ever assured - even as he sports a glint of vulnerability in his haunted eyes.

Here stands a boy who has spent so much of his life having everything he's ever wanted that one single rejection was enough to topple him.

A girl who's grown up as the youngest of four, who has lived on hand-me-downs her entire life even as she yearns for the finger things, has a different kind of resilience bred into her.

Perhaps she can't blame Laurie for his fragility, but she most certainly wants to blame him for the way he's been licking his wounds.

"Stop feeling bad for yourself, Laurie," she speaks with less bite today, even if with equal censure.

"Who says I am?"

"Your eyes do, and your hands do, and your entire life does." Amy steps towards him, Fred forgotten for the moment. She swallows harshly. "There are many of us out there trying to make the most of what we have, and I find it a little offensive that you are attributing it all to 'luck.'"

"Isn't he though?" Laurie tilts his chin upwards, like he's also interested in defying the poets. "Fred Vaughn, one of two twins, one of four siblings - dull, plain, and over-privileged. Yet somehow he manages to capture the attention of a woman as alluring as yourself. How can I not call it 'luck'?"

Amy narrows her eyes. She knows what she's chosen.

And it feels a little harrowing to be questioned over exactly what she knows she has chosen.

She sighs deeply. "Not all of us can be so wonderful on our own, Laurie."

"But you are."

And there he is again - teetering between friendly and flirtatious. It's a dangerous place, as dangerous as the thin ice upon which she once fell.

More sounds come from outside.

Amy squares herself again. "I have to go."

Laurie catches her by the wrist before she does.

He kisses her hand. "Enjoy your day, _mademoiselle._ "

She nods, fights her blush, and goes.


	2. Chapter 2

"You know why," he tells her, when she asks him for the reason behind his sudden request that she not marry Fred Vaughn.

Fred is rich. Fred is kind. Fred is willing to marry her!

Those three facts alone should be enough to persuade anyone in her station that Fred is the right choice.

But Laurie tells her not to - and he implies that someone - that _he_ should be the reason she should back away from a perfectly adequate match.

And she fumes.

She tells him he's being mean. He either pretends to not know or really, truly does not know what she's referring to.

So she tells him, in the plainest words that her young heart can spurt.

"I have been second to Jo my whole life, in everything. And I will not be the person you settle for just because you cannot have her." She sniffs. Vulnerability is not like her. She likes her armor, her fashion - all the pretty things in life that shield the deep-seated disappointments that have always been weaved into the very fabric of her existence. "I won't. I won't do it."

She stifles a sob. His suggestion is cruel, heartbreaking even.

It is a poor attempt to replace inherent unfairness with even further injustice.

"I won't - " she echoes, "not when I've spent my entire life loving you."

She spins on her heels, drawings forgotten.

What good are those drawings anyway, when they serve only as a reminder of what she cannot have?

Laurie is Jo's. He always has been.

And, to Amy's reluctant yet inevitable resignation, he probably always will be.

It is Jo's ring on his finger, after all.

"Amy!" he calls after her.

She pauses briefly. She runs on.

It's utterly ridiculous that even in her rejection, Jo owns Laurie. And it's incredibly, notoriously unfair that the only way Amy can have any prerogative over any part of her relationship with Laurie is to turn him down the one and only time he seems to seek her out sincerely.

But it's not as if he loves her.

And far be it from her to settle for a man whose heart is not hers.

"Amy, please!" he calls again.

She halts by a fence, fingers trembling as she clings on to the wooden post. She fights her tears, refusing to be cowered.

She has her pride yet.

"Amy." He reaches her and touches her shoulder.

She waits a second before shrugging it off - the same way she's shrugged off his recent flirtatious touches of her hands, her face, her lips. She's not Jo. She can't wrestle with him like two rowdy friends and pretend it doesn't mean more. She can't look him in the eye and pretend he's just a brother.

"Don't make it harder, Laurie." She tells him, shaking her head infinitesimally the entire time.

"Love isn't supposed to be hard," he replies, in those soft, gentle tones of his. Laurie, only Laurie, can make the simplest words sound like a serenade.

"Then maybe that's why." She successfully stifles another sob - at least, she thinks she does. "I - "

She gives in to herself, just this once, and leans forward to peck him on the cheek.

"I have to write Fred," she says before running away.


	3. Chapter 3

"I don't despite you, Laurie," she admits - her heart, soul, and body crushed in his embrace - when he travels from London just to come see her. Even now, in her darkest hour, he remains her rock. "Beth was the best of us."

Her face contorts, her heart aches. She's relieved that he absorbs it all.

"I'm not marrying Fred," she states when she finally turns away, because some things just have to be said.

"I heard about that," he answers quietly.

She nods. "And you are under no obligation to say anything, or do anything."

She shakes her head and breathes deep.

"I just didn't love him as I should - so we don't need to talk about it, we don't have to say anything - "

He kisses her then, all tenderness and sorrow. And this time, she doesn't push him away.

She knows she loves him. She's known it for forever.

But this time, just the way he speaks her name and the way he holds her close gives her a glimpse of a hope that he just may love her too.

"Amy," he whispers when they part after their kiss.

She meets his eyes, their faces inches apart. It's the first time she's allowed herself to be this close to him - and the intoxication is different from anything she'd ever allowed her young mind to imagine.

It's deeper, truer.

It's as if they parted at the park as boy and girl and now meet each other as man and woman.

The valley of the shadow of death can do that to people, sometimes.

"Thank you for coming," she says, lamely. She - she of the thousand opinions, she of the outspoken thoughts - is falling back on clichés.

"I had to," he says. He kisses her brow. "I can't possibly let you do this alone."

She rolls her lips before releasing them. "And why is that?"

The question hangs between them like a weighted pendulum. It swings between the frivolous and the permanent, the superficial and the profound.

"Because I love you," he says, without a hint of irony. "I love your fire and your courage. I love your determination and your strength. I love that you refuse to let me waste my life because you see so much more to it than I do - and I wish you could be part of it too."

Tears escape her. She blinks back at the man who's owned her heart since the very first day he'd entered her life.

"Marry me?" he whispers - like a plea, like a prayer, like a hope.

"I suppose I could." She smiles, before he kisses her again.

Aunt March takes the news with grim resignation and a knowing look. The vicar glares at them when they alternate soft, knowing looks during the simple ceremony. She wears black on her wedding day, though her heart is painted a dozen shades of newfound joy.

They both agree that Beth would approve.

"Thank you, my lord," she speaks to him fondly when he helps her onto the deck of their ship. The warmth of his hand reminds her of the myriad other types of warmth they've shared since that first kiss.

He presses his lips against her brow, his hands around her waist. "You are most welcome, milady."


End file.
